visva-bharati university

Rabindranath Tagore founded Visva-Bharati as an institution of learning in 1921 in a district named Birbhum in the southern part of the present day West Bengal, arguably using a part of his Nobel Prize award money. He gave the name Visva-Bharati very consciously which meant a communion of the world with India and he wanted to create an education system opposing the colonial education system. Tagore wanted his students’ view of society to be informed by internationalism, humanism and universal brotherhood. He viewed the traditional school, bounded by its four walls and weighed down by a rigid curriculum, as a prison. At Bolpur-Shantiniketan Visva-Bharati campus, classes are held in open air. The idea is to be close to nature, where students could define their boundaries of knowledge.

After independence, in 1951 i.e. exactly a decade after Tagore’s demise it was converted into a central University with the Prime Minister as its Chancellor. The university is divided into institutes, centres, departments and schools, spread over a large part of the University city of Bolpur in Birbhum district.